Education Business Focus

Stay Connected - Making the most of Broadband and Wi-fi in Schools

The importance of reliable connectivity in schools is the hot topic to be addressed in November's Education Business Focus. Conveniently hosted online, this short interactive webinar will support your school and staff with the UK government’s Connect the Classroom 2025 scheme - a fully funded programme by the Department for Education aiming to improve Wireless infrastructure in 600 schools across the UK.

Event Host, British Educational Suppliers Association Head of Content Dave Smith will be joined by an expert panel of guests including Niel McLean, Head of Education at BCS and Dr Fiona Aubrey–Smith from the One Life Learning Strategic Education Consultancy.

Join us on 8th November to help your school stay connected and discover more ways to connect your school's classrooms with the latest, education tailored networking solutions.

Agenda

10.00	Welcome & Event Overview Host: Dave Smith, Head of Content, British Educational Suppliers Association
10.13	Changing the way we think about technology in education Dr Fiona Aubrey-Smith, Director, One Life Learning Strategic Education Consultancy.
10.21	EB Briefer: Cambium Networks Marc Jackson / Bruce Miller, Cambium Networks
10.30	Bridging the digital divide Niel McLean, Head of Education, BCS – The Chartered Institute for IT
10.38	Live Q&A session including interactive polls - Submit your questions and get the answers you need from keynote speakers and technology suppliers
11.00	Event Roundup & Close Dave Smith

Event timings and speakers are subject to change

Speakers

Dr Fiona Aubrey–Smith

Director, One Life Learning Strategic Education Consultancy
 Named by Education Business as one of the 50 most influential people in education (2022 and 2021), Dr Fiona Aubrey-Smith is an award winning teacher and leader with a passion for supporting those who work with children and young people.

Bruce Miller

Vice President, Enterprise Marketing, Cambium Networks
Bruce Miller is Vice President, Enterprise Marketing for Cambium Networks. He has over 30 years experience bringing communications products to market in marketing, business development, and engineering roles, with the last 15 years in wireless and cloud networking. At Cambium, he leads product marketing functions for the enterprise networking business. Prior to Cambium, he was in product management and product marketing roles at companies including Riverbed, Xirrus, Ixia, Lucent, and Cabletron.

Niel McLean

Head of Education, BCS
Niel started as a teacher and local authority adviser developing the use of technology in the classroom. In the early 1990s he developed the first National Curriculum and qualifications for IT and Computing. As an executive director at the government’s technology agency, he created support services for schools and teachers and led the scheme providing technology to 250 000 low-income families. He has worked in senior roles in the private and charity sectors before joining BCS.

Jonathan Bishop

CEO & Executive Headteacher of the Cornerstone Academy Trust
Jonathan Bishop is CEO and Executive Headteacher of the Cornerstone Academy Trust. With the 4 schools within the Trust as Microsoft Schools and as a Microsoft Innovative Educator, Jonathan pioneered the use of digital technologies in the classroom for many years. His schools employ the use of one-to-one Microsoft Surfaces to deliver a project-based curriculum that fully utilises the power of Microsoft365 tools.

Marc Jackson

Regional Technical Manager, Cambium Networks
Marc has been in his role since September 2019 as a Regional Technical Manager at Cambium Networks. Prior to this he held a position at Riverbed Technology and Xirrus as a Solutions Engineer mainly focused on Wireless Technologies.

Dave Smith

Head of Content, British Educational Suppliers Association (BESA)
Dave has recently joined BESA to lead on EdTech, including steering the content of BESA’s highly successful conferences and events. He is also leading on BESA’s ever popular EdTech Exchange and Bett Futures programmes, as well further highlighting the work of BESA as the trusted voice for EdTech and other education suppliers in educational establishments in the UK and beyond.

Cambium Networks

Cambium Networks delivers wireless communications that work for businesses, communities and cities worldwide. Millions of our radios are deployed to connect people, places and things with a unified wireless fabric that spans multiple standards and frequencies of fixed wireless and Wi-Fi, all managed centrally via the cloud.

Nuvias

The Nuvias Group is a fast-growing company with a broad range of innovative services and solutions in collaboration with leading technology suppliers. Nuvias specialises in providing security, agility and manageability for clients, networks and cloud technology solutions through an ecosystem of highly skilled channel partners.

BCS - The Chartered Institute of IT

With more than 60,000 members in 150 countries, and a wider community of business leaders, educators, practitioners and policy-makers all committed to its mission, BCS’s agenda is to lead the IT industry through its ethical challenges, to support the people who work in the industry, and to make IT good for society.

British Educational Suppliers Association (BESA)

The British Educational Suppliers Association has an 85-year heritage serving the UK education sector, and represents over 300 educational suppliers in the UK, including manufacturers and distributors of equipment, materials, books, consumables, furniture, technology, ICT hardware and EdTech to the education market.